A few years ago, the Twins met with local baseball writers to brainstorm on how to have a pre-season hot stove banquet. Twins president Dave St. Peter got us together with the Minnesota Medical  Foundation, and the Diamond Awards were born.
Since 2006, we have raised $1.7 million to help with research to cure Ataxia, ALS, Parkinson’s disease, muscular dystrophy and multiple sclerosis. The late Carl Pohlad stunned everyone during the first Diamond Awards when he donated $500,000. You don’t have to look far to come across someone who has been affected, or has a loved one affected, by one of these conditions.
It’s a good time. We hand out awards (Most Valuable Twin, Twins Outstanding Rookie, the Bob Allison Twins Leadership Award, etc.). We talk about the upcoming season. We eat! There’s a silent auction (one of the items for auction is a day with me at the ballpark). You get to see your favorite sportswriters in tuxedos. And all the award winners – Joe Mauer, Justin Morneau, Alexi Casilla, Joe Nathan, Ben Revere ,Anthony Slama and others – have agreed to attend.
The banquet takes place Jan. 22 at the City Center Marriott. The tickets aren’t cheap - $150.00 – but part of the cost is tax deductible and is for a good cause. If you can’t make it, stay tuned for details when the event will be aired on Fox Sports North.
As the chairman of the Twin Cities chapter of the Baseball Writers Association of America, I am proud to be part of this event and would love to see some of you there. A link to the event is now at the top of the blogroll on the right. If you can’t make it -if the economy makes it too tough this year - maybe next year.

Hopefully, there will be a couple updates later. But today will be a little tough to gather information because of Carl Pohlad’s funeral.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 8th, 2009 at 11:13 am and is filed under The offseason. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.